5 Types of Bosses and How to Handle Them

The boss is on the most emblematic elements in the workplace environment. Surrounded by power, respect, and able to decide your future, the boss is a variable able to have a strong impact in your life. But not all bosses are the same. Knowing which type of boss you have at work can reveal the best methods of making your life easy and enjoying the time spent at work.

The tyrant boss

Although we live and work inside a democracy, small organization can grow to rely more on the authoritarian style of leadership. The tyrant boss sees itself as above everyone else, and is never ashamed of admitting that. For him/her, following hierarchies, etiquettes, and unwritten rules is more important that doing the job right. Having a tyrant boss might make your life miserable, or might make you a better serving employee, depending on your sensitivity to criticism and excessive authority. This type of boss is more likely to impose a more relaxed control on your overall output, but he/she will be fast to instant penalize a mistake happening before his/her eyes. The tyrant boss needs to prove its position from time to time and will produce outburst of fury.

The good guy boss

Some people simply cannot act as jerks, whatever the circumstances might be. These creates are friendlier environment at the workspace, although this usually means a lighter grip on employees and their disciplines. But do not let yourself fooled by the “good guy” boss. The same way he/she is able to smile at your joke during the coffee break, he/she will also tell you that you are fired. However good your boss is as person, it needs to respond to the same forces governing all business types: productivity and profitability.

The detail boss

Although some bosses judge you only based on your final results of work, there are some cases where you will find yourself stuck with the boss on your head, correcting each missing comma, or insisting that the excel has nice colors of the tabs. Depending mostly on the field of work, the detail boss will focus its attention on different aspects of your work. Expect commentaries regarding your personal appearance if you work in front desk jobs. Achieving armistice with such a boss can learn you a lot about how to better organize your work, and even your life. Going full scale with the details might give you obsessive compulsive disorder, or you might end up rejecting discipline altogether.

The stalker boss

If you plan to use your free hours browsing the internet or catching up on Facebook, guess again. There are some bosses who despise such activities and will do anything to track, and hunt you down during the act. Expect computer and personal surveillance like in spy movies, as the technology for full office coverage is already there on the market. The stalker boss feels power when he/she knows exactly what everyone else is doing. Work results are not important for the stalker boss, as long as everyone acts normal on its surveillance close circuit TV. The stalker boss is very sensitive to gossip, so be careful what you are talking with your colleagues behind his/her back.

The absent boss

We all know how this goes on. The boss is never in its office, and never reachable for questions or opinions. Nevertheless, he/she will want from you work delivered according to the requirements. An office without the boss present will be a continuous holyday with weeks before project deadline, and like a school campus in the night before the exam, with only a few days remaining. The absent boss often surprises its employees with the decisions it makes, and can produce quite a few shocks for those unfamiliar with this style.

There is no mystery that the type of boss you have at your workspace can ultimately shape your career and you as a person. It is also very common for incompatibilities with management to determine someone to quit. Every type of boss will eventually showcase a way of working around such deficiencies. It is also important to understand that some bosses act in a strange way because they feel responsibility pushing on them.